I'm asking that you not reveal my name. I've had two experiences with two
different cryptids. It may sound unusual or lucky to some, but after you
hear this story, you decide for yourself if I was lucky. I'm withholding
exact dates and locations for this story, but it is absolutely true. These
are the things that happen to men that create nightmares and others. I have
to give you this background information before I get into the grim details of my
encounter, to better help you understand a few things as they are happening.
My friend and I hunted all over the Appalachian mountains and in different states.
We were both active rifle and bow hunters, and this story takes place at
the beginning of beau season. I became more of a speed nut with my
bow's performance. Warning my bow to shoot soon, fast and straight, using
only one site pin to eliminate the distance. Guesswork, and it has worked
well for me over the past years. I achieved this by using an overdraw,
allowing for me to use shorter arrows that reduce the arrow weight, and
that helped my seventy pound bow shoot consistently over three hundred feet per second.
I could shoot accurately with one pin up to forty five yards, no guesswork,
and a very flat trajectory. I had another quirk, and that is
using my climber tree stand to heights much higher than normal. I always hunt
from a position forty feet up in a tree. I know this height is
achieved because when I set my stand and climb, I have a forty foot
rope attached to my stand, with the other end tied to my bow and
my daypack, which remains on the ground. While climbing, I feel the
rope grow taut, and I know that at my desired height. I then
simply pull up my supplies after securing my stand. This method is used by
other bow hunters using climbing stands because it's easier to pull up your belongings rather
than trying to climb up and down with them. You can't use a climber
efficiently carrying everything up with you when you are ascending or descending a tree,
so these things are raised and lowered with a rope. I like this height
because I believe most animals use their peripheral vision and do not look intentionally upwards
to that height in a tree. Therefore, I remain unseen. With all
that out of the way, I must tell you that I'm becoming emotional at
this point because it is the time for me to tell you the grim details
about what happened. This is very difficult and has been suppressed in me for
many years. This has haunted me for almost thirty years, a very traumatic
experience, scarying me deeply, both physically and mentally. I'm only telling this
now because I'm in my seventies and I feel I need to warn and alert
others. I no longer care what others say about me. It was a
brisk fall day, and my friend and I arrived at a good spot and
the mountains that we had chosen by map, far away from everyone and close
to a good bedding and water source. We had to start our journey the
night before to reach our secluded spot. The woods were beginning to open up
with the leaves mostly fallen, and my friend and I set up about one
hundred or so yards apart where we could see one another after first light.
At each side of the funnel, which is a narrow area between a food
source or bedding and water and well traveled by deer from one place to another.
We thought it to be a perfect spot to catch deer passing through.
My friend was looking one way and I was looking in the opposite direction.
I guess it was around ten am when I heard my friend making a racket,
and I wondered what he was doing. He only sets his tree stand
about fifteen foot off the ground. But then I heard him yell something as
he pulled his pistol. He fired several shots from his forty five acp that
he always carried bow hunting, and then everything went to hell. From that
I saw this creature directly under his stand, and with one quick motion,
it either jumped or just reached up and grabbed his stand, and down everything
came. My friend was then hanging by his safety harness, but that thing
was on him in no time, and it ripped him to the ground.
I could hear him screaming as it was raking at him with its claws with
such ferocity, and just as quickly as his screams stopped. It was standing
on two legs the entire time and was not a bear or anything I had
ever seen before. I could see the body proportions were all wrong for it
to be a bear, with everything happening so fast, I did not know
what to do. I didn't have a firearm, and the distance was too
great for my bow, and I only had a United States Marine Corps k
bar World War II knife with a seven inch blade. And I have to
admit I was frozen with fear, knowing that my friend was either dead or
close to it. It would take me several long minutes to climb down from
my position, so I just waited in silence as my friend laid at this
thing's feet, early, quiet and not moving. I don't know to this
day if that attack was provoked by my friend shooting it or what he saw
up to that time forcing him to pull his firearm. Was it fear or
was he under attack? That thing was now satisfied that my friend was no
more of a threat, and it started circling and walking towards me on two
legs. It was staring at the ground and sniffing, as if it was
backtracking where my friend had walked to his stand, from my tree to his.
It was as if it wanted to see where he had come from,
but the tracks in the scent were leading it directly to me. When it
was right under me, it paused and was sniffing the air, and then
continued past my tree, still on the trail we had walked in on.
But now it obviously detected two different scents, and it stopped and dropped to
all fours, and it sniffed the ground and the air, and it was
really trying to figure all this out. I now had the time to really
look at this creature, taking in as much detail as I could. It
was very tall and muscular. Its hair was coarse and black in color.
It had a thicker mane of gray and black hair going from its neck down
to the center of its back, which was a bit hunched over. It
had a definite canine face with a huge muzzle and big teeth. The mouth
was always open, the ears were pointed and standing straight up. The legs
were doglike but very muscular at the top, and the feet had claws.
The arms were so long and muscular that it had more of what I would
say hands, with long claws on each finger, and they were bloody.
It was my friend's blood. It spent most of its time on two feet,
and this thing looked like a werewolf right out of the movies. The
creature paced around the path we had walked in on and it never looked up
at me, assuming it never expected anyone up that high, it obviously knew
there was someone else here. I drew my bow and I prayed. My
bow did not make much of a sound as I drew my arrow, but
this thing hurt me anyway, and it looked up and we locked eyes.
It was only about ten yards from my tree, and now I was committed.
So I released an arrow and it penetrated just below its left shoulder.
It let out a roar and it ran off. I thought this might be
my only chance to get out of this tree, so without hesitation, I
climbed down as fast as I could, bow on my lap, and as
soon as I was on the ground getting myself together, it returned unbelievably fast.
I grabbed my tree stand, and now I was facing this creature only
feet away. I could clearly see my arrow still buried in its upper chest.
So with my tree stand in my hands, I threw the stand at
it to give me time to do something, and I did not know what,
so being a martial artist, I reacted defensively and gave it a good
kicking the knee, trying to take it off its balance while its arms were
busy dealing with the tree stand. But its knee, though bending back like
a dog's, was as solid as if I had kicked a telephone pole.
Knew this was it for me, so I instinctively and immediately drew my knife
in the same movement. There was no way I could have kicked that thing
any higher to do any damage, because its knees or chest high to me,
with its head being around three feet taller than I was, I didn't
think the kick would do much damage, but I still hoped it would buckle
its knee. But with that failing, it did give me another split second,
and the creature hesitated from the kick long enough for me to plunge my
knife into its side, hoping it would retreat again, But instead, this
time it retaliated viciously by backhanding me with its left clawed hand and then slashing
me with its right claw, going down my shoulder, chest, and stomach,
all in one fast movement. I think the force of its first blow
was actually my salvation, because it knocked me back just far enough that I
did not receive the full impact of the claws from its right hand, though
it was still enough to cause significant damage to my flesh even through my clothing.
It was lights out for me, and the next thing that I remember
is waking up in what appeared to me to be a shallow grave of dirt,
leaves, and branches. The area was not dug out, rather just
a depression and a heap of debris thrown on top of me. I did
not know where I was, but everything was quiet. I could hear running
water somewhere close, and I knew this would be my only chance. I
slowly climbed out, and as I tried to stand, my right foot and
ankle were pretty ripped up and my boot was missing. This creature must have
dragged me around by my foot. I had to gather all the strength I
had to make it to the running water. I knew this thing could easily
track me on land, especially now that I was bleeding, so I had
to make it to the water and hope that it would help to hide my
scent. When I reached the water, I was lucky because it was swiftly
moving water deep enough to carry me away. I grabbed a log and went
into the water, and it was cold, but with each passing second I
was hoping it was taking me away from this beast. At one point,
I thought I heard a howl in the distance, but I can't be sure.
I stayed in that water for what seemed like an eternity, and I
do not know how far I traveled, but I came upon a camp and
was lucky enough to be helped by two other hunters who were back at their
camp eating. They took me to the hospital, and on that trip I
told the two hunters that rescued me what was out there, but I don't
know if they believed me since I was in such bad shape. They kept
me in the hospital for a week, stitching my wounds and taking precautions for
infection. I was visited by local police and I gave them a location on
the map of where we were and all that happened. But they returned two
days later, telling me that they found my busted bow and two twisted tree
stands, but no sign of my friend other than some blood. It was
now the last day of my hospital stay and I was visited by two mysterious
men who drilled me with questions. I gave them every detail that was burned
into my memory, and after hearing all that I told them. They said
it must have been a bear. I countered with, there's no way it
was a bear. I was confronting this creature, looking right at it,
and I know what a bear looks like. And they replied with, no,
you don't understand it was a bear. And they said that they know
who I am, and they know everything about me, and they do not
want to hear me saying anything except it was a bear attape. Well,
I'm getting too old now to worry about those guys who were there present.
I lost a good friend that day, and I have physical and mental scars
to remind me every day. That proved that the nightmares that I have every
night are real. My final word to hunters is there's something out there,
so at least let others know where you will be. I don't know what
it would take to bring this thing down, obviously much more than hunters,
especially bow hunters, who normally have with them just a bow and an arrow.
And in my case, it was shot at least three times with a
forty five automatic and my bow, shooting a three hundred and sixty grain arrow
at three hundred and fifteen feet per second, and then stabbed with my knife,
penetrating all seven inches of the knife. Now this may sound crazy,
but next year, on my friend's seventieth birthday, I'm returning to that spot
to honor my friend and play some flowers about that spot. But this time
I'm going to be taking my ar rifle and a fifty Beowolf caliber and a
hefty side arm, of course, and a larger knife. This is something
I have to do. I know there was nothing I could have done to
help my friend that day, but that does not take away the hurt,
the pain, and the nightmares. I may be living on borrow time,
but I'm being drawn back, and maybe this will help put closure for me
in one way or another. People that do not know me sometimes at the
beach who see me without a shirt on, look at my scars and they
ask what happened? I mean, how do you answer that? My usual
response is I say it was a bear attack, but they would not believe
the truth and it would take much longer for me to respond that way,
So, avoiding a long story, I simply say those two words bear attack.
I hope that by sharing this story with you and your listeners who also
have had encounters, that my story may help to save someone. I don't
know if these creatures only violently react to aggression or what my friends saw to
make him shoot, perhaps fear because it was coming at him. I can
certainly understand my friend's shooting since he was so much lower to the ground,
and that creature may have been the aggressor. I survived that encounter and my
friend did not. And there are secret groups out there that want to hide
the encounters like this from the public. But I have kept this locked inside
me for all these years, and I need to start doing something about it
and let people know